Jason Ryberg

WHERE-IN OUR HERO COMES
TO THE UNDENIABLE CONCLUSION
THAT HE'S HAD TOO MUCH COFFE (OR,
MEDITATIONS ON LOVE, SEX, DEATH, ETC.)

For Adam Mersmann

The sun is fading out
and the streetlights are fazing in
and it looks like another
lonely Sunday night
has rolled around on
The Universal Roulette Wheel again;

another lonely, tight-lipped,
cold-shouldered, keep-you-at-arm's-length
kind of a night,

where nothin’ in your little corner
of the world seems right
and theres no one around to talk to,
nothin’ decent to eat or drink,
nothin’ but bad news on the TV and the radio,
and not a single, silvery jingle of a ring
from the telephone, all night.

And the time is takin’ its sweet time,
goin nowhere slow,
and I guess I can say the same
'cause there’s really nowhere you can go
with only ten dollars to your name,
snakes in your belly,
high-octane surgin' through your veins
and a batty lone-gunman
runnin' round your belltower
makin' all kinds o' threats
and outrageous demands.

So, just what is this nameless, motherless,
coldly-sweating thing, you might ask,
(this time) wearing tights
and a Mexican wrestling mask,
always looming and slavering at us
from just inside the shadows,

this thing that so many of us, so often,
must go toe-to-toe with and take to task
whenever the world suddenly goes cold
and you find yourself alone,
just sitting there in a kitchen
beneath a bare sixty-watt bulb
or a windowless basement bed room
and the TV and the radio are goin’ on and on
about floods and bombs and toxic waste
and a million other variations
of encroaching doom.

Well, maybe any minute now
the phone is gonna sing-out a "hey buddy,
how ya been" kinda song or maybe
a hundred dollar bill is gonna come wafting along
on a gust of cosmic/karmic wind (via your sock drawer
or an old coat pocket)

or maybe that fine little girl
that just moved in next door yesterday
might come callin' for no reason at all.

Maybe a Playboy playmate
riding a golden wrecking ball,
is gonna come crashing through
my living room wall holding a fishbowl-sized,
desert-dry, Skyy martini.

Maybe my long lost Uncle Mikey
is gonna show up out of nowhere
on the very bike he (reportedly) died on,
with a single-malt scotch and a bag of weed,
his .357 snub-nose and that boogity-boogity
look in his eyes that always scared
the sweet ba-jeeezus outta me.

Yeah, and maybe Shiva or Lao-Tze or Ghandi,
Sweet Georgia Brown or motherfuckin' Johnny Cash
is gonna come floatin' down on a silvery cloud
and show me the shining path
or secret formula to... what?

Enlightenment? Excitement? Or escape velocity?
Some sort of quasi-transcendental,
semi-existential emotive experience, maybe.

So, like, you know,
if there's somebody up there listenin',
in the front row or the cheap-seats of Cloud 9,
in the attic of the world (or just the walled-off
upstairs closet of my mind):

Gimme a lead.
Gimme a hint.
Gimme a sign.
Gimme a line or two in your
next big budget production.

I could be "Thug 2" or "Hillbilly At Bar"
or "Man At Bus Stop"
or somethin.'

And maybe turn the heat up a little
while you’re at it.

And could you cash this two-party,
outta state check for me, maybe?
Sorry I aint got any I.D.
of who I am or nothin'.

And brother-man,
could you please tell me;

who's a guy gotta sleep with
to get a little love in this town?


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